Want to your boost productivity of your Mac ? Shortcuts are nice way to work fast then hovering mouse everywhere. With such a beautiful eye friendly interface, Mac is much more advanced system which gives you abilities to process up your tasks with the help of keyboard using shortcut keys.
And pressing buttons and combination of keys is faster than taking your cursor to the button which can be under the finder, or in the menu that is the sub-menu in the finder. Working with shortcuts is easy and you will find it making your tasks faster too.
I have gathered up some hidden features and shortcuts your are probably unaware of. These includes shortcuts related to finder, window, dock, terminal commands and tricks.
Finder Shortcuts
- ⌘ + R - Reveals the selected item in a new Finder window.
- ⌘ + I - Info window shows for the selected item.
- ⌘ + D - selects the Desktop folder as a destination
- ⌘ + ⌥ + L - selects ~/Download folder as a destination
- ⌘ + F - cursor jumps to the Find text field
- ⌘ + . - Cancels and closes the dialog window
- ⌘ + ⇧ + > - Shows/Hides hidden files in the dialog
Screenshot Shortcuts
- ⌘+⇧+3 : Capture entire screen and save as a file
- ⌘+ctrl+⇧+3 : Capture entire screen and copy to the clipboard
- ⌘+⇧+4 : Capture dragged area and save as a file
- ⌘+ctrl+⇧+4 : Capture dragged area and copy to the clipboard
- ⌘+⇧+4 then space : Capture a window, menu, desktop icon, or the menu bar and save as a file
- ⌘+ctrl+⇧+4 then space : Capture a window, menu, desktop icon, or the menu bar and copy to the clipboard
- Another useful trick is to hold space while drawing a capture area to reposition it.
- Hit esc while capturing an area or window to exit capture mode.
Text Field Shortcuts
Use these shortcuts in the text editors.
- ctrl+A: beginning of line.
- ctrl+E: end of line.
- ctrl+U: delete from cursor to beginning of line.
- ctrl+K: delete from cursor to end of line.
- ctrl+W: erase word to the left.
- ctrl+T: transpose characters around cursor.
System Shortcuts
- ctrl + ⌥ + ⌘ + ⏏ : Shuts the computer down
- ⌥ + ⌘ + ⏏ : sends computer to sleep
- ⇧ + ctrl + ⏏ : send display only to sleep
- ctrl + ⌘ + ⏏ : restarts the Mac
- ⌥ + ⌘ + esc : lets you kill not responding programs (including the Finder)
- ⌘ + , : gets you to preferences of almost every program
Switching Windows and Apps
You may already be knowing that ⌘ + Tab lets you switch through all the windows. You can do ⌘ + Shift + Tab for reverse selecting the icons while switching these apps.
Also, you can quit the while you are switching through apps by keeping the ⌘ pressed and press Q on the active icon to make the app or window close. You can use Shift + Q with ⌘ pressed to restart the finder.
Quick Jump to Spotlight
You can use ⌘ + Space to quickly go to the Spotlight search box where you can type and search.
Set Default Applications
You can set default application for any filetype, like if you want the movie to open with VLC Player instead of Quicktime by default, you can do so by selecting the file and right-click, and click on Get Info.
You will see an "Open With" section in that, you can select the default application for that specific filetype and then click on Change all to set it as default.
Repositioning Finder Bar Icons
Do you know you can reposition the system icons on the top left of the finder bar by pressing ⌘ and moving the icons left or right. But this only works for system icons and most external apps doesn't support this.
Clean Memory Without Any App
If you find your Mac getting slow at time then you can open terminal app and run sudo purge for freeing up the memory quickly. This deletes cache files which ultimately boosts up browsing and improves booting speed.
Navigate through Finder using Keyboard
You can navigate to finder bar using keyboard by pressing Ctrl + F2 which will highlight the Apple logo in the Finder. You can use right, left, bottom and up buttons to quickly open up the settings and menus.